1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for adaptive data transmission in a communication system, and in particular to a method for enabling data transmission in a variable transmission rate by using a transmission capacity which is not being currently used even if it had been allocated to users in a communication system in which a number of users share a transmission medium to transmit data in the variable transmission rate.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, the data traffic change, which is transmitted via a communication system, has characteristics that traffic modeling is difficult, such as, deviation is large and forecasting is impossible. Thus, in a conventional radio communication system such as CDMA(Code Division Multiple Access) system where the capacity is restricted by mutual interference, it has been literally impossible to efficiently utilize the idle capacity for data transmission even if the capacity allocated for data service has not being used when the amount of data is not known before the point of transmission.
In a wire network, the data traffic temporarily exceeding the maximum transmission capacity can be treated via buffering, or can be retransmitted without unimportant data based upon priority. However, in a communication system such as CDMA system where the capacity is restricted by mutual interference, there have been various problems such as when the actual amount of the data traffic exceeds the maximum transmission capacity allowed, all of the transmitted data in this point gets lost or the system may not be normally operated.